Productive Forest and Attributes to Generate Potential Cutblocks for the Northwest Territories, Canada

Data is being hosted here, as the original data is unavailable for an automated pipeline from the data provider to usage by the anthropogenic disturbance model for the Northwest Territories. INFORMATION ABOUT THE ORIGINAL DATA SOURCE: Forest cover used to generate potential cutblocks. This specific layer shows the potential places where new cutblocks can appear, based on forest age and type. Layer name is NT_FORCOV.shp. The FVI data in the Wek’èezhı̀ı region was originally created in 2011 and stand ages were updated by overlaying recent fires in the region and recalculating stand ages current to 2021. To characterize forestry potential, forest stands were first broken down into “productive” and “unproductive” forests. “Productive” forest stands were defined as those with a minimum Site Index (SI_50) value of 8 (which means stands have a height of at least 8 m at 50 years) and a minimum crown closure (CROWNCLOS) of 30%. Productive forest stands were then broken down into three age categories: Recently burned (≤10 years old, currently suitable for salvage harvesting); 11‐49 years old (will be suitable for timber harvesting in the future); and ≥50 years old (currently suitable for timber harvesting). Unproductive forest stands and non‐forested polygons within the FVI were assumed to have little potential for commercial forestry. We add to these as a priority 1 the most likely areas to be harvested in the next 2 decades due to permits issued (Digaa_LandUsePermitArea and Timberworks_LandUsePermitArea). ORIGINAL DATA PREVIOUSLY AVAILABLE AT: The original file came through file transfer from ENR (contact: [e-mail]). We used the layer NT_FORCOV to generate the potentialCutblocks. As the layer had intersection problems and was a GDB, the process to deal with it would have to be idiosyncratic. Therefore, I opted to work on the layer and resave as an ESRI shapefile.